Official Lore of Lyrethia
The world of Lyrethia is a mysterious place, full of dark secrets and hidden conflict. In the very fabric of our realm is a great war between the Wraiths and the Spirits, beings of chaos and order. The Wraiths fought eternally against the Spirits, wearing down into chaos every orderly thing the Spirits created. Every time the beginnings of life emerged, they were wiped off the face of the land by the Wraiths. Throughout endless ages this continued, creation and instant destruction, until the Spirits made a great sacrifice. At the cost of many lives, the Spirits forged their power into a great Seal, locking the Wraiths away in a cocoon of pure order that would last forever against the onslaught of the Wraiths. For thousands of years, the Seal held as the Spirits nurtured the life that was growing in the world. They watched, transfixed by the majesty of it for many ages. The small creatures forming into larger ones, the mountains rising and falling. The sun burning in the heavens. It was all so new to them! As with all new things, however, it grew stale and boring. The sun burnt the same way every day, the tides of the sea rose and fell routinely. Nothing changed! The Spirits soon stopped bothering with the mere lives and worlds they had created, focusing instead on maintaining order and keeping the Seal from degrading. It appeared as though their sacrifice had worked. The Wraiths were locked away and the Seal was as strong as ever. This peace lasted until the first humans began walking the lands; as the first sentient beings in Lyrethia, they were also the first to understand conflict. The first to understand order and chaos. Like the Spirits and the Wraiths, some enjoyed building up order, while others tore down the order with chaos as the Wraiths had. This was not of much concern to the Spirits originally, as those who created order created enough that the destroyers did not have the ability to tear down more than was built up. Over time, however, the evil ones began using dark arts to tamper with the fabric of the invisible world where the Spirits and Wraiths resided, not knowing that other intelligent beings resided in their invisible world, watching over the order of the physical realm of Lyrethia. These people, like all others in Lyrethia, did not know of the Wraiths or the Spirits in any way. To them, chaos came naturally and order was a thing to be created from effort; they had no idea that the Wraiths were the cause of all decay in the world. The Spirits were appalled by this evil being done. They were angered. The insolence of these humans, these insects! Their chaos was tearing down the Seal slowly, as water erodes a rock. If it were not stopped, then the Spirits and Wraiths would again be at war with one another, and the whole world would be wiped out in an instant. As a punishment to these foul souls, the Spirits withdrew the protection of the Seal from the evil ones and allowed the Wraiths to touch their hearts. This was intended to simply end the humans’ existences in an extremely painful way, but the Wraiths used this seemingly harmless decision to twist them into evil-hearted men and women who were simply puppets of the Wraiths, used as tools to sow chaos and disorder. Those so corrupted by the Wraiths were termed the Fallen, as they had fallen from the natural order of the world. The Fallen were tainted, corrupted by the Wraiths. Everywhere they went, the world began to wither and die around them. First the plants wilted around the places where the Fallen spend most of their time. After some weeks, the crops in the field would stop growing and begin to waste away with disease. The cattle would come next, their young being born deformed as the older ones perish of disease and weakness. After a year, a Fallen’s constant presence in an area will lead to even the humans suffering and dying of plaguelike symptoms. Because of the adverse effects of the Fallen’s very existence, people shrank away from them in fear and hatred, striking out to kill anyone they even suspected could be Fallen. Needless to say, many innocent men and women have been murdered because they were suspected of being among the ranks of the Fallen. Due to the Wraiths’ clever use of the small degree of freedom the Spirits had allowed them, the degradation of the Seal became a serious worry. In turn, this required the Spirits to choose other people to preserve the order against the Fallen. As the Spirits were very weak from their great sacrifice for the Seal, their chosen were gifted with only the ability to see glimpses into the world of the Spirits. These people were selected at random, since the Spirits were unable to understand humanity with any clarity, and given a choice of whether to use their Sight to help the Spirits or not. To some, it was a great gift and tool for their use, while to others it was a burden of heavy weight that encumbered them all the days of their lives. It was never predictable. One could be given the Sight as a child, as an aging grandfather, or any time in between. Those with the Sight were called the Seeing, for they could see what others could not. The Seeing and the Fallen were doomed to never reincarnate after their deaths, only to have their souls dissipate like mist. As the chosen of the Spirits and the Wraiths respectively, they were hated by one side or the other with a great passion and were prevented from reincarnating into a new body or even existing as a ghost for a time. Many of both sides were driven to depression by this fact, and the Seeing pleaded with the Spirits to remove their Sight, but the Spirits could not. They were beings of order, and could not destroy something they had created. Throughout all of this the others in humanity, the Unaware as they were called for not having the Sight as the Fallen and the Seeing did, had glimpses into the world of the Spirits and the Wraiths. They were as varied as the animals of the world they shared, with hair and skin of every hue and shade. Many, if not most of the Unaware were grateful for their lack of the Sight. They, unlike the Seeing and the Fallen, were able to continue on after death in the form of reincarnation, or so the ghosts of their kin told them from the knowledge that being a part of the spiritual plane imparted unto them. Throughout the hidden conflict between the Seeing and the Fallen, the Unaware were able to exist in blissful ignorance. Most did not know the difference between a Seeing and a Fallen, and those who did mostly did not care. They could do things and see things that the Unaware could not, and that made them a threat. The Unaware did not understand the great conflict that the two beings with the Sight represented, and continued on in their normal existence without ever giving it a passing thought. After all, they did not see any fighting, so it did not matter to them. Upon dying a violent death such as murder, the Spirits would grant the Unaware’s soul half a year to haunt the world as a ghost, able to get revenge for their deaths or part with their loved ones. Unfortunately, only those with the Sight and the murderer could see such a ghost, or perhaps a dearly-loved friend if the ghost were lucky. They resided half in the spirit world, so they lacked more than rudimentary contact with the world of the living, but rested secure in the knowledge that they would rise again in a new body, with a new mind at the end of their cycle as a ghost. Despite the assurance of their continued existence, or perhaps because of it, the ghosts did things that they knew were foolhardy and sometimes cruel. They have been known to drive others to the brink of madness with cruelty with their ability to make objects seemingly float in midair. Unaware who see the uncanny powers of the ghosts may be convinced they are going insane, or be driven to do things they otherwise would not. This has led the phenomenon of ghosts to have a mixed reputation. Ghosts can be anything they choose, but are only limited by a few ‘rules’ the Spirits set out for them. In all this turmoil, with the forces of order and chaos colliding and mortal men striving for one purpose or the other, anything is possible. 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